GEOTRACES in the Mediterranean

GEOTRACES in the Mediterranean

Welcome to the Web page for GEOTRACES activities in the Mediterranean.
Please choose one of the options below to proceed:

Background information —-   GEOTRACES Mediterranean Workshops  —-   Network and contacts

Background

During the GEOTRACES Atlantic Planning workshop in Oxford in September of 2007, a working group met to discuss potential GEOTRACES-related activities in the Mediterranean. Participants from seven countries met and discussed processes and features of interest in this marginal sea. These included:

• Atlantic Ocean water entering and traversing the Mediterranean and changes in its chemical signal during this process.
• Sites of formation of intermediate/deep waters in both basins and the evolution of their chemical signal.
• Sites of shelf-basin exchange, e.g., riverine input. Regions of dust deposition and geochemical processes associated with such events.
• Diverse topographic features, e.g., shelves, sills, abyssal plains, seamounts.
• An inter-calibration site on the Atlantic Ocean side of the Straits of Gibraltar.

and, based on these, they drafted potential cruise sections.

During the ASLO Aquatic Sciences 2009 Meeting in Nice, France, several interested individuals from five countries met informally and discussed GEOTRACES in the Mediterranean further. New individuals were informed of the international project, the developing effort for the Mediterranean, as well as of the relevant COST Action (ES0801), which had already been funded by the ESF. The key points that emerged from the discussion were:

• A scientific action plan for GEOTRACES activities in the Mediterranean would be beneficial.
• Funding opportunities (e.g., 7th Framework Program of the EU, other EU and regional funding programs) should be explored further.
• Participation from other EU member states as well as southern Mediterranean countries should be pursued.

A special talk, outlining the background on GEOTRACES and the Mediterranean, as well as suggestions for future actions, was presented by Catherine Jeandel and collaborators during the April 2009 meeting of the Management Committee of Action ES0801 in Vigo, Spain. The full talk can be downloaded from the Action Web site (http://costaction.earth.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/12294/Jeandel.pdf).

GEOTRACES Mediterranean Workshops

The GEOTRACES Mediterranean Planning Workshop – October 2010

A special GEOTRACES Mediterranean Planning Workshop took place on 4-6 October 2010 in Nice, France. For more information, please see the workshop Web site and a summary for the motivation to carry out GEOTRACES activities in the Mediterranean (excerpt from the Vigo 2009 MC meeting mentioned above). The Report of the Workshop is also available to download.

The GEOTRACES Mediterranean Cruise Planning Workshop – September 2011

A second workshop devoted to the Mediterranean was held on September 2011 in Toulouse, France. The aim of this meeting was to plan and to clarify the GEOTRACES Mediterranean cruise planned for 2013 and process studies defined in the previous workshop, as well as to discuss about the intercalibration procedures. For more information, please see the workshop Web site. The Report of the Workshop is also available to download.

Network of participants and contacts (in alphabetic order by name)